With over 10 million downloads Socialcam is said to be Instagram for video; a smartphone application which is designed to easily share videos by saving them onto your “camera roll”.  Video on your camera roll can be exported to other places such as YouTube or other social media sites.   The biggest selling point for Socialcam is that it’s easy to use.

Although Socialcam sounds like it would be fun for personal use and easy for business use there are already many criticisms about the program.  Most of the criticism has to do with the way the app overshares users’ activity.

Socialcam pulls trending videos that it thinks you might like, and posts them to your profile without your permission and posts on your behalf every time you watch a video. So, while Socialcam is a legitimate application which means it is not technically spam, it may make it appear as though your Facebook page has been spammed.

In addition to taking up all the space on a users’ wall, the content posted can be embarrassing for some users.  Any video a user clicks on is posted to their wall accompanied by a thumbnail.  So videos users would not have chosen to let everyone know they watched as well as ones they only accidently clicked on are posted as if they are sharing them.  This can especially be an issue as Socialcam does not ban violent or other explicit content.  “Click-bait” or “link-bait” is also an issue with the app.  That is when the content of the videos does not match what their title implies.

Before you link this app to your Facebook account consider the risk you are taking.  If you post a video manually, then you are recommending it.  If you use Socialcam and the videos get posted for you, it still appears to others as though you’re recommending them.  So all content that you watch, either on purpose or accidently, will look as though it has your seal of approval.  If you are willing to take that risk, go ahead and install Socialcam.

That being said, if you are careful there is a way around the issue.

Go to Socialcam.com to create your account.  A popup will appear with a large blue “Connect with Facebook” button.  In the fine print you can either click to create a Facebook account if you don’t have one or you can click to login without Facebook.  Using the app without connecting it to your Facebook may defeat the purpose for you, but it will also protect your reputation.

Tags: facebook, facebook applications, iPhone apps, smartphone apps, Social media, social media marketing, socialcam, uses of social media, web 2.0

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2012 at 8:41 am by Jessica Glynn and is filed under Marketing, Social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.